Architecture: You Could Call Him Mr. Softee

There are architects who love the Parthenon. Greg Lynn has a thing for the blob. This would not only be the '50s sci-fi thriller about a belligerent wad of jelly. The blobs that beguile him are any "isomorphic polysurfaces," meaning shapes that are, well, blobs. Architecture is a profession in which the cube and sphere are still the literal building blocks. What Lynn prefers reminds you of amoebas and bundled foam. In the most pliant forms of nature, in very irregular geometry, he sees the future.

"Architecture has been nostalgic forever for a bygone era," he says. Lynn isn't. At...